Ahh… here we are again. The time of year when introspection starts to unravel my mind. I’ll be 36 in 4 days, and it happens every year.
Regardless, this morning I’ve been given the new opportunity to hold hands with a new book I’m excited about, and it’s stirred some fun thought-walkabouts in my mind.
I want to be financially well off. Generationally wealthy, and it’s funny to me that when I think about making money at that scale… my brain also has this idea that because I’m 36… that ship has somehow sailed for me. Which is wildly untrue. And I am abundantly sure of that.
Which then leads me to my next thought, which is, “I just have to figure out how,” which I also think is abundantly curious because “have to”… let’s be real. I don’t have to do anything.
In fact, I know the exact path that I’m fighting tooth and nail that would put me in the direct path of comfort and security because I’ve been there before.
But that’s also an interesting thought because what about this struggle has made me closer or better to what I want?
Honestly nothing.
So what if the very path I’m avoiding is the thing that actually makes the needle move?
There is ego in my answer for sure. I feel… “I just don’t want to.”
I don’t want the hours or the lack of time freedom. I don’t want time away from Christian. I want to have what I want the way I want to do it.
And I don’t know if that makes me stubborn or lazy or silly or dumb. Because if you or I, I guess, could have something sooner or faster if I did it this way, but much slower and inconsistently if I do it my way… why wouldn’t I do it the first way?
Is it dumb? Is it stubborn? Ego? Probably a little of all of that.
But I think it’s mostly a deep value in believing that I can still create the most beautiful life I can imagine, and it doesn’t have to look the way anyone else would have done it.
And to go back to this quote I highlighted in the book today…
“…you realized that the courage it takes to keep opening doors, even if they all close, is all part of the process?”
That’s kind of how I view my life if I had to simplify it and name it in a sentence… or I guess a question, which feels all the more fitting.
I will never forget something I wrote in the very first blog I had… fueling the fire… something to the notion of… because I don’t think I can quote it specifically…
“My life has become this grand experiment of throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks.”
And for a while I did it more publicly than I do now. Which I think happened when I was less known. I had just moved across the country to a city where I didn’t know a single person.
It was easier to be bolder in thought, and in declarations I felt before anyone could, or before anyone was around to judge whether I was living congruently with them.
I’ve always felt more confident in the shadows because the big feelings and grand notions about living—what it means to do it well, or “right”… which I now know isn’t necessarily right for everyone, but I do still believe deeply that this way I have discovered is a way you can have your own version—were bold and sure.
Then I started to be known, I made friends and built community, and I learned that although the big feelings, bold declarations, and passionate thinking never went away, I wasn't always going to choose that path congruently in my life.
Sometimes because I was tired. Sometimes I was mid-experiment. Sometimes because the people in that chapter weren’t “those type” of people. Expansive thinkers, if you will.
Sometimes because as you get close to people, the nuance of humanity bubbles to the surface and I realized that it could offend, or my boldness was incomplete or riddled with privilege.
Which I think is what really happened with the podcast.
I realized that it was a privilege to think anyone could do anything with their lives at any time. And even though I still believe that to be true, there are other truths along the way… next to it.
That yes, I picked up my life and moved it across the country, and could anyone do that? Yes, and… some have kids, families, other obligations I’m sure I know nothing about and I’m missing, but they all factor in and still count, and that makes no one weak or less or less capable or dedicated to changing their lives just because those things are true.
Because having things that matter doesn’t make other things matter less.
It just means that at the time… for me… this is what I chose to matter most.
There was a selfishness I possessed that I wanted to, and still want to, instill in more people. And honestly, maybe that’s the actual backbone of every single thing I believe in.
Maybe it’s the word or feeling I’ve been searching for since I left. Since I put this pen to paper this morning.
Maybe it’s all been selfish.
But it’s my life. And I firmly believe that any of the supporting characters in my story can opt out at any time, and I’ll figure out what that means to me or for me next, but it’s my life.
I don’t want to do it anyone else’s way.
And maybe it takes longer to get the safety and consistency and stability that allows me to take a deep breath a little more often, but I know in my bones that I will never be different.
Not because I don’t recognize the value in anything else, but because I think, I believe, down to my bones that this one life is precious and I want to wring it all dry.
Selfish means true, for me, right now.
And it also means that maybe I’ll change my mind again tomorrow, and I reserve the right to do that.
It means a willingness to lose and fail if I did it my way. It means growing, evolving, changing as I trust my perspective in the world, which is “always” as much encompassing as I can expand it.
Even outside my own feelings or experience. Empathetic understanding.
It’s uncompromising when I believe the limits of that compromise are doused in fear or harmful patterns. Even when they are, especially when they are, not mine.
It is grace wrapped even through disagreement or disengagement.
It is the example I want to set. The legacy I want to leave.
It is what I want them to say at my funeral.
“Cait was a little or maybe a lot selfish at times, but she lived, and I loved being a part of the ride.”
It is not… selfish is not mean or unkind. Selfish is not greedy or cold.
It’s not making or needing anyone else to do it my way because I’ve never lived their lives.
It’s not convincing (it is inviting).
It’s not uncompromising or lonely. (Although it is very boundaried.)
It’s not entitled or only self-serving.
It’s not out of fear… It’s a diving into figure it out.
It’s not shrinking anyone else’s experience. It’s making room for all of it and taking what works for me.
So how do I do it?
I’m patient. I listen because I know nothing inside of me is threatened. I speak my mind. I tell my truth.
I don’t worry how it might be heard because none of my business.
I listen more when those that matter have something to say. I learn when I don’t want to cause hurt. I compromise when I feel like the gain is greater.
I make mistakes for the lessons.
I take the cards life gives me and make my best move… even when it’s inconvenient.
Maybe taking advantage at times, but honestly… then say no.
Respecting people’s no. Letting people leave, letting them return.
Well, this was wild and productive and eye-opening as always.
I am selfish, and I’m okay with that. I know why I am. Or why this storyline of my life compels me.
It is an exact reaction to the child I never got to be, and I’m not mad at it.
And I think the times I feel less selfish are the times when the truth of her, the wounded parts, told her she couldn’t or shouldn’t. Who would be mad, who it would hurt, who it would inconvenience.
She’s overly considerate.
And now, as an adult, I not only know why or where she learned that, but I also know what about those qualities makes them important.
And I think the true healing begins when I realize one doesn’t come without the other.
That this worry is the wounded, considerate little girl asking to stay safe. She will always come, but the—or maybe and—the selfish child within me is asking, begging to be seen.
The truest version of me before life began to layer perspective on top.
The ADHD and the autism. They all come.
And maybe I want to start looking at it less like they are all sitting around a boardroom table.
And more like sitting in a field making flower crowns.
And the closest one sitting next to me is:
Xx, Cait